Did you hear that I’m making a wreath every day? Today I made a paper collage wreath created out of mixed media pages from one of my journals, then punched into star shapes. I love how it turned out – it has a happy, colorful quality that also evokes graffiti and found objects. If you have some scrap paper and spare art supplies, you can make this wreath! Read on to find out how:
Wreath a Day #2: Mixed Media Paper Star Wreath
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Supplies Used:
I used supplies I already had in my stash, but your stash will vary. Regardless, you can make colorful mixed-media pages with stuff you already have on hand, or with a few items from the dollar store. Read my related article: How to Find Art Journaling Supplies at the Dollar Store.
*Items with an asterisk can be found at the dollar store
- Watercolor paper*
- Watercolor paints*
- EK Success Large Star Punch
- 10×10″ Piece of card stock
- Markers*
- White pen* (Use a White-Out pen from the dollar store)
- Glue* (I used Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue)
- Scissors*
1. Creating Mixed Media Papers:
Last spring, I took a mixed media art journaling class from my locally owned art & craft store. In the class, I learned how to use Ranger Dylusions Ink Sprays (SO MUCH FUN), which are water-based pigment sprays that work like watercolor paints. In the class, we ripped several pages out of our journals to use to clean up our inks while we worked on our journals. Then, we saved each page to use for later.
If you are creating your own mixed media pages from scratch, simply
- Cover a couple pages of watercolor paper with your favorite colors of watercolor paint. Make sure to use several different colors.
- Let the watercolored pages dry completely. (Use a hairdryer to speed up the drying process, if you are impatient.)
- Doodle and write over the watercolored areas with marker. Add additional details with a white gel pen (or one of those White Out-style correction pens from the dollar store).
- You can also add any other types of embellishment you can think of, including paint splatter, smearing, paint daubs (see the red dots on the yellow page in the photo above? I used bingo marker pens from the dollar store to make those), or rubber stamped images.
Don’t worry if you think the page looks ugly, or a section of a page isn’t the best. Once you punch the paper, each star becomes a work of art. As you can see in the photo above, my pages weren’t all that impressive.
2. Next, punch out the stars.
I like to remove the bottom cover from my paper punch and punch it upside-down so I can see the paper and I can position the shape to punch out the best-looking section of the paper. Punch one side of the paper, then trim away the jagged paper to cut the next section of the paper.
3. Create a wreath form
Since this wreath is just made from paper, I decided to create my own “wreath form” with a piece of card stock. I folded a large square piece of paper into quarters, then cut an arc shape out of the corner, and a hole in the middle.
As you can see, my wreath form isn’t perfectly round. I didn’t mind that for this particular wreath.
4. Glue stars to the wreath form
This step is pretty self-explanatory! One thing to think about is layering your less-favorite stars onto the wreath first, as you will be gluing other stars overlapping them. Spread the different colors of stars evenly around the wreath.
I had a lot of stars left. They are so neat! I made sure to save them all (as well as the background papers I punched out) for a future mixed media project. Maybe I’ll add them to my art journal.
I hope this project has inspired you to make something today! You can use some of the techniques explained here to create your own unique artistic wreath.
